How VELUX uses Mixed Methodologies to Stay Customer Centric

The Case: VELUX

Specializing in roof windows and skylights, VELUX is dedicated to bringing daylight and life into people’s homes, workplaces, and schools around the world. With more than 10,000 employees and offices in more than 40 countries, VELUX is a worldwide organization that serves thousands of customers every year. Their team is committed to delivering the best possible user experience, not only for their end customers, but also for the architects, contractors, and installers who work with their products.

The Challenge

Even though VELUX’s products are best experienced in person, a lot of their customers begin their interactions with the company digitally. VELUX offers a variety of digital products including their website, apps, and other digital tools, to help their customers explore their product catalogue and make a purchase. To make this experience as seamless and intuitive as possible, VELUX works continuously to keep the customer in mind while developing digital products.

Lene Alice Bate, Senior Manager in VELUX, has worked hard to bring customers closer into the process of developing the digital customer journey via a variety of user experience testing methodologies. “When we want to make a new solution, or improve an existing solution, we need to test it with our customers as soon as possible, to know whether we are going in the right direction or not,” Lene explains. “So, part of my job is to bring in partners that can push forward our agenda of integrating valid user experience methods into our process of developing new digital solutions.”

In evaluating and selecting a partner, Lene has three primary requirements: speed, global reach, and valid collection methodologies.

“When you test a sketch, you can see if the customers really do not like it early on… [and] then you can stop and save a lot of money.”

— Lene Alice Bate, Senior Manager in VELUX

“With customer feedback, it’s much easier to say, ‘this is the right direction.”

— Lene Alice Bate, Senior Manager in VELUX

The Opportunity

VELUX enlisted UserTribe to conduct multiple user research studies across a range of digital products and across the whole project lifecycle. For Lene, getting customer feedback early in the process to validate an idea or concept was as essential as beta or live testing.

“When you test a sketch, you can see if the customers really do not like it early on—even if you have what you believe is an enormously good idea—then you can stop and save a lot of money,” Lene explains. “Then you can use that money on something that makes sense and benefits the customers and the company.”

Once an idea or concept has been validated at the initial stages, VELUX has used UserTribe’s research to speed up their decision-making process throughout development. “We have one example where we had two suggestions on how to develop a digital solution,” Lene explains. “We tested both to see which one performed the best, and it was very easy to spot which one was performing. We didn’t have to discuss it. With customer feedback, it’s much easier to say, ‘this is the right direction.”

The Result

As VELUX continues to develop and improve their digital tools, they continue to use a variety of user research methodologies. For Lene, UserTribe delivers value by providing a variety of data collection methodologies, delivered quickly.

“UserTribe has this platform of bringing customers in and doing both moderated and unmoderated tests, and really focusing on that process, and that makes you faster and in that sense unique” Lene explains. “Doing it fast is always an issue. The thing is, if you are to do it yourself, while you’re also doing a lot of other tasks, then you might not be able to do it as fast and agile as you want and need to.”

At the end of the day, it’s all about developing the right digital product for customers. That means getting customer feedback at every step of the way: “We want to bring UserTribe along in the process to make sure we get feedback from the customers and can iterate on it, make an updated version, test it again, and then at the end we will be able to develop the right digital product faster.”